Sunday, 2 September 2012

FS291 - Casing Carolina

My daughter and I both play piano and we have lots of friends and teachers who will appreciate this musical card. The dots on the staves are meant only to imply music and are purely decorative (at least I think they are, I haven't tried humming them! lol!).

The piano stamp is from Sparkle and Sprinkle (yes, really - I've never heard of them, either, but now I've found them online, so I'll have to take a look! I bought the stamp at Stamp Art last week). The 'staff' stamp is from Background Basics: Retro from Papertrey, stamped in Memento London Fog ink, with Copic dots.

This card is a perfect example of why I use black so often for my cards. This card is really pretty in real life, but my photography/picture editing skills leave this photo looking quite flat, I think because of the lower contrast between the white and the silver than if I had used black. I recently purchased Photoshop Elements, so that will be my next big adventure, to see if I can become more consistent in the quality of my photos. Any advice?

Edited to add:

Here it is after a quick auto-fix in Photoshop. I think it's better - the colours are a bit truer. I've got A LOT to learn though!

PS - for those who asked, Tuesday is the first day back to school for my kids. I've been with them (and my husband) 24/7 since last Friday, and am ready for some alone time, thank you.;-)

I like the color and the affect you've created with the mono lines and the pops of dots!

And you play piano, too, huh? Don't make me hate you! I tried it once when I forced DS to take lessons. I got just to the good part, learning chords, and got called back to work ... I never when back to it, but it's okay, really. I have the world's biggest tin ear and, anyway, the piano is being moved to the twinks' house so they can learn to play, which is a very cool thing!

I love this card - so colorful and fun and playful. How great that you know you will have someone to send it to who will really appreciate it. I think both your pics look great. One day I am going to learn photoshop too - another thing on my paper crafting bucket list (right after I learn to color) - LOL! Love your blog too!

Oh, and I forgot to add advice on photo editing in Elements. I took a class and follow their advice to always start with fixing your levels. cntl l is the shortcut to bring up the levels window. You will see a hill (or maybe a mountain range depending on your photos). Move the triangles on the left and right to the center where the hill starts. Sometimes I stop just before the hill, use your judgement. That step should take care of any lightness, contrast, and clarity issues. Then I go to Enhance, Adjust Color, Remove Color Cast. You click on a spot in your photo that's supposed to be white, and then it recalibrates the rest of the photo based on how it fixed the white. It's like magic. That takes care of any color issues usually. So "levels" and "adjust color" are the two things I typically do in Elements.